AMD Athlon 64 X2 65nm Brisbane-Core

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Power & Thermal Characteristics (LOAD) & Overclocking

AMD Athlon 64 X2 65nm "Brisbane"

Vitals: Power & Thermal Characteristics - 100% LOAD

In our next test we get to the real thermal/power numbers, that being with each core pegged at 100% usage. To do this, two iterations of Prime95 were launched with the Torture test set for maximum heat load. In each test, the system ran for 30 minutes before recording the results.

With the CPU pinned at 100% utilization, we can clearly see the lower power requirements of the "Brisbane" core compared to "Windsor". Here we see a difference of 29 watts, which is actually slightly greater that the 25 watt difference between the "Windsor's" 89 watt specification and the "Brisbane's" 65 watt Maximum Thermal Rating.

When measuring the CPU temperatures during each test, we recorded a drop of 8 degrees C with "Brisbane" over "Windsor", which is a decent drop in overall operating temperature.

Overclocking The AM2 Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane

Headroom and then some...

With respect to overclocking, we took a rather simplistic approach. In this test, all that was done was the memory was set to its lowest setting and the clock register was raised, recording the highest speed that we could post into Windows XP. The end result was an easily achieved 2.95GHz with the clock generator set for 227MHz and no voltage adjustments whatsoever. Once the system posted, we launched two iterations of the Prime 95 torture test and each test ran close to 6 minutes before throwing an exception and terminating. Surely, with a bit more tweaking of the voltage and multiplier, we could find a bit more stability.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane

Stock Clockspeed - 2.6GHz

Overclocked - 2.95GHz

Before wrapping up our overclocking segment, we did take our Athlon 64 X2 5000+ "Windsor" processor and repeat the same procedure. The end result was much lower, reaching a maximum stable clock speed of 2.79GHz with the clock generator set at 215MHz. Anything beyond this resulted in Windows crashing during the boot process.